My father's nose

I had a conversation the other day with my friend, Steve. Steve is attending Harvard for a year in an accelerated Master’s program. He and I met a few years ago when we were both attending grad school at Northwestern. Steve and I grew up in neighboring towns, are the same age, and have one major interest that brought us together: writing. Steve is a single man, who’s much more intelligent than I am, and is a great conversationalist.

During our conversation, Steve commented on how, on a couple occasions, he read in my blog that people have taken harsh tones with my children. Steve’s not a parent, but if he were, I think he would have the same parenting style that Cyndi and I have adopted. While I am certainly not a saint when it comes to raising our children, I think I have a pretty solid relationship with my kids. I’ve had to raise my voice at them at times, but I’ve never raised a hand at them. Parenting is frustrating at times (much of the time) and you learn by making mistakes (a lot of the time) and getting things right (some of the time).

I came close to hitting Frederic once. I think he was nearly three years old when this happened. It was early in the morning, on a workday, and he awoke at some god-awful early time. Cyndi and I had told him to stay in his room until we were ready to get him, but he had his own mind made up. He didn’t want to stay in bed. He wanted to be with us. I thought it was time to teach him boundaries because he was insistent that his way was the right way. We played a verbal game of tennis, until I reached my limit. I got up from bed, stormed into his room, grabbed a hold of both of his little arms/shoulders and shouted, “YOU WILL LISTEN! YOU WILL STAY IN HERE! UNDERSTAND?”

I got my point across, but I scared the shit out of him. To the point that he was bawling. To the point he was shaking.

In the end, it was too much for both of us to handle. I walked out of his room, into the bathroom, and proceeded to bawl myself. Profusely. I disappointed myself and my son. I reached my boiling point and I crumbled. I had told myself I would never get physical with my children, and I did.

Frederic doesn’t remember the incident today, but he did for several years. I’ve never laid my hands on him since, and have never done this with Lily. I did, however, get angry again the other day.

At Rex. The dog. I had taken out a 2 ½ pound pot roast out of the freezer in the morning to thaw for the evening’s dinner, and when we returned from Frederic’s soccer game, it was no longer on the counter top, where I left it. The evidence of the incident was all over our family room in the form of shredded butcher’s paper and plastic wrap. My first clue that something was wrong was when I heard my kids yell, “Rexie, what did you do?” I assumed he got into one of the kids’ stuffed animals, or tracked mud in the house. When I was summoned into the room to assist with the punishment, I knew it was something much bigger.

When I was a kid, and my dad got angry at us, his nose would twitch. Kind of like Samantha from “Bewitched,” his nose would twinkle from side to side, uncontrollably. However, if you saw his nose twitch, no witchcraft would get you out of the punishment he would unleash. It was a scary sight to see. As we got older, the twitching became amusing. It took everything we had not to laugh as our punishment was being administered.

The nose twitch was a Fosco family trait. Our uncle, dad’s brother, Shelly, twitched his nose too when he was angry. He could do it, like our father, on command too.

So here’s something I learned from getting angry at Frederic, and unleashing some whoop-ass yelling at the dog on Saturday afternoon: I have the twitch.

And when I have it, whoever is on the other side of my anger shakes too. Frederic did when he was younger, and so did Rex. Shook uncontrollably. He shook so bad that I felt guilty for my actions. I mean, really, both examples were partially my fault too. I could have easily let Frederic hang out with us in our bedroom, and I could have easily put the meat higher, away from Rex’s reach.

Makes me wonder how my dad felt.